Feel the cold and darkness. Feel more the dismal gloom of 5:30 on a Monday morning, embarking on a two-hour bus ride on the metro line from my home in Evergreen Park, Illinois to my high school in inner-city Chicago. The month is January.
I remember slinking low in my large puffed jacket, pressed against the iced window.
I remember shutting my eyes for more desperately needed sleep, only to be jarred awake again by the woman with the oversized handbag who always seemed to sit next to me.
Once in the city, the winter sun desperately tried to provide light, but heat it never could. The slight dawn, however, was my cue to prepare for what was ahead.
The only brightness I ever remember on that long ride usually occurred at about the same time and at the same place. It was curious really, what cheered me: a bakery shop on a busy city corner. The man in the window with the white T-shirt and bulging arms flipping the dough or adding the sugar to the large vat. The slight smell of the alreadybaking cinnamon rolls even finding its way all the way to my bus.
More, it was the people gathered there. An unusual collection. There were the boys from my school in pressed navy slacks and overcoats, our school uniform, mostly white boys who were transferring to my bus from other suburban bus lines.There was an Hispanic woman with her two young children shivering under their mother's blanket. I imagined them sprawled later in a rich person's house as their mother did the cleaning. There were the winos, squatted against the smeared window and blocking the display of donuts. Homeless beggars-mostly African American men-edged close to the door, hoping for some change.
There we all were together, for a moment anyway, as we started another day. It was school and work and opportunities and despair that had us there and somehow cheered us a bit.
It was the smell of the bread.
Jesus offered the common experience of sharing of bread as his gift to us. Jesus' ministry was rooted in meal-sharing and breaking bread with people of all kinds: from rich to poor, from religious leaders to sinners. In eucharist, we join our lives in communion with those who are physically with us now, those who lived before us, and those who remain outside the church walls. Eucharist is a moment when we say, "Yes, Jesus, I believe in you. Yes, I will love others and will help to bring your life and word to them."